


Closer Together

by spaghettipolicy



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Ableism, Ableist Language, F/M, Gay Sex, Homophobic Language, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Molestation, Oral Sex, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sexual Experimentation, Sexual Fantasy, Sexual Humor, Sibling Incest, Statutory Rape, Underage Drinking, Underage Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-16 15:44:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10574427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaghettipolicy/pseuds/spaghettipolicy
Summary: A series exploring the various relationships within the gang. Each chapter will be devoted to a different pairing. Completed.





	1. Mac & Charlie

Everyone in the gang knew Mac was gay. Everyone except for Mac.

Charlie had known since they were kids. In fact, he could pinpoint when he had the realization. The summer before their junior year of high school, Mac had roped Charlie into helping him prepare for wrestling team tryouts in September. This involved a lot of shirtless grappling under the sprinkler on the field outside St. Joe’s. Mac insisted they practice that way, citing the ancient Greek custom of wrestling fully nude.

“The gladiators used to fight each other bare-ass naked, man,” he argued. “I’m just asking for shirts off is all.” (Gladiators were Roman, not Greek, and they did not in fact fight naked, but Mac didn’t know that. Fortunately for him, neither did Charlie.) Ever the loyal friend, Charlie complied, peeling off his sweat-stained T-shirt and flinging it into the wet grass. Mac nodded his solemn approval. Then, as if being asked to justify himself further, he added, “It’s not to be faggy. I’m just trying to keep it real. Keep it authentic.” He flexed as he spoke, turning left and then right to give Charlie the optimal view of his biceps.

The sprinkler served a practical purpose, too, he explained. The spray slickened their skin, making it tougher for Mac to get a firm grip on Charlie’s body, thereby forcing him to work harder. The added challenge would help prepare him to wrestle more experienced opponents when tryouts finally rolled around.

Charlie would never have said so aloud, but the truth was that Mac didn’t need the added challenge. He was, quite simply, a terrible wrestler. He had the advantage of being bigger and heavier than Charlie, but he had no coordination and his reflex time sucked. Charlie, meanwhile, was fast and scrappy and could hold his own just fine against his taller, stronger friend, but Mac would never acknowledge that. Whenever Charlie managed to wriggle out of his grasp, Mac was ready with a made-up-on-the-fly explanation of how and why he’d allowed him to win, which he’d share with professorial authority. He lied so automatically that Charlie wasn’t sure he even realized he was lying.

But Charlie didn’t care. He was just happy to be spending time with his best friend. After each wrestling session they’d head back to Mac’s place, where they’d share a joint and a couple of beers smuggled from the fridge and shoot the shit until long after the streetlights came on. Mac would brag about his latest conquests, going into uncomfortably graphic detail about which chick he banged in the back of his dad’s Oldsmobile, and in what positions, and for how long. Charlie would nod and laugh knowingly and return every self-congratulatory high-five Mac gave him while silently praying that Mac wouldn’t ask him for any dirt about Stacy Corvelli. It would be too humiliating to confess that he didn’t have any.

One exceptionally hot night, the two found themselves in Mac’s bedroom as they so often did after wrestling practice, splitting a six-pack, a Domino's, and a dime bag and trying in vain to unscramble some Cinemax porn. The box fan jury-rigged into the open window barely took the edge off the sweltering heat and, desperate for some relief, the two had stripped down to their briefs. While Charlie packed a bowl, Mac made a hail Mary effort to secure a wire hanger wrapped in aluminum foil to his ancient portable TV set. “You motherfucker,” he swore under his breath, slapping the set as if to smooth out the warped picture.

“Come on, man, it’s a lost cause,” Charlie said. “You’re acting like you’ve never seen tits before.” He took a long hit, holding the smoke in his lungs for a luxurious moment before exhaling slowly through his nostrils.

“I’m starting to think _you’ve_ never seen tits,” Mac teased back. “Only a dude who’s never been to the promised land would give up that quickly.” He turned and grinned at Charlie over his shoulder.

“Shut up, man!” Charlie yowled, his voice getting high and reedy the way it always did when he was worked up. “I’ve banged all kinds of chicks! You don’t even know.”

“Oh, please, dude,” Mac scoffed. “You’re a perma-virgin and we both know it.”

At that, Charlie picked up a half-full can of Miller Lite and flung it at Mac. He gasped in surprise at his own accuracy when the can nailed Mac in the head, showering him and the TV in beer. Seconds later, Charlie was lying on the bedroom floor, pinned beneath his friend’s weight. He could feel the corner of the empty pizza box digging into his back as he struggled to free himself. Ordinarily he’d manage to twist himself out of Mac’s grasp, but right now he was too drunk and high to fight back meaningfully. Instead he could only lie there giggling beneath the full weight of Mac’s body.

“Say you’re a virgin,” Mac ordered, that stupid, smug grin still plastered across his face.

“Your mom’s a virgin!” Charlie shrieked, not sure what he meant by that even as it was leaving his mouth. This only made both of them laugh harder. But Mac was undeterred, and he pinned Charlie’s wrists over his head with one hand while turning his face with the other, forcing him to make eye contact. Mac’s face was flushed, and Charlie could tell he was on the verge of succumbing to a fit of laughter, but it wasn’t weakening his grip any. “Say you’re a virgin, homo!” he commanded.

Charlie was incredulous. “Wait, _who’s_ a homo? You’re lying on top of me in your tighty-whities, bro! I bet you’d like to ass-rape me right now!” he taunted.

“I bet you’d love that, seeing as how you aren’t getting any!”

“I’m getting plenty from your mom,” Charlie retorted.

“Are you seriously just gonna make ‘your mom’ jokes all night? Is that the best you’ve got?” Mac teased.

They continued to struggle on the floor, Charlie thrashing his body this way and that to gain some leverage, Mac fighting to contain him, and both laughing uncontrollably. Then, somehow, Charlie managed to get a hand free. Knowing his only hope of winning was by fighting dirty, he grabbed for Mac’s balls. Instead, all activity came to a screeching halt as Charlie’s hand collided with the unmistakable tent of an erection in his friend’s briefs.

For a moment the boys froze. Then Mac raised himself up onto his knees and elbows, lifting his weight off Charlie, but not standing up at the risk of further exposing his own arousal. Charlie remained motionless on his back, one hand still suspended in mid-air, unable to look Mac in the eye. A picture was beginning to take shape in his mind. It was a collage of images from their wrestling sessions, images that he’d ignored at the time because he didn’t want to think about what they meant. Truth was, this was far from the first time Mac had gotten hard while wrestling Charlie, but it was the first time Charlie found himself unable to pretend it wasn’t happening.

“Dude,” Mac cut into his thoughts. “You touched my dick. That’s seriously the gayest thing.” He pulled himself upright so he was sitting on his knees.

“You had a boner, dude,” Charlie replied, dumbfounded.

Mac snorted, as if Charlie was just hopelessly slow on the uptake. “ _Of course_ I had a boner, man,” he replied, looking everywhere but at Charlie. “It happens to wrestlers all the time. It’s not, like, _gay_ , though. It’s just a normal biological response that kicks in when you’re displaying dominance. You see it through the whole animal kingdom. It’s about _power_.” He over-emphasized the word “power.”

Charlie was pretty sure—no, make that positive—that Mac was making this up. But he also knew he couldn’t argue with him. Whatever Mac’s deal was, he wasn’t ready to talk about it. Hell, he was so deep in denial he may not have realized what was happening himself. Either way, Charlie knew if he pushed the subject Mac would only get angry, so instead he picked himself up, sat back down against the bed, and began packing another bowl.

Mac turned his attention back to the TV, bending his makeshift antenna to encourage the wavy blue and orange picture to come into focus.

That was the last time they wrestled together before Mac’s tryouts. He didn’t make the team.


	2. Dee & Dennis

When she’s twelve, Dee cajoles her mother into letting her compete in the Little Miss Philadelphia pageant. Barbara looks amused, as if anticipating her daughter’s public failure, and tells her she’s much too ugly to have any hope of winning, but she pays the $75 entrance fee anyway. After all, child pageants are a perfect place to meet men.

In the weeks leading up to the competition, Dee readies herself with single-minded determination. She’s too young to visit the tanning salon, so every day after school she coats her skin in suntan oil and lies on the front lawn. She sets a kitchen timer for fifteen-minute intervals so she knows when to roll over, ensuring the evenest possible tan. She uses her mother’s razor to shave her legs and arms, and practices applying frosted eyeshadow, fake eyelashes, and bubblegum-pink lip gloss in the bathroom mirror. She sprays Sun-In in her hair to lighten it and sleeps in braids to make it wavy. In the privacy of her bedroom, she puts on her bikini and practices walking like a runway model, posing with a winning smile. Most importantly, she assembles a whole repertoire of celebrity impersonations for the talent portion of the contest.

To her mother’s astonishment, not to mention her own, Dee wins. Barbara is pleased enough by the $1000 first-prize check and by the vicarious attention her daughter is bringing her that she allows her to enter another. She’s stupefied when Dee wins again, and when she wins almost every subsequent competition she enters. Over the next two years Dee brings home armloads of ribbons, trophies, and rhinestone tiaras, and Barbara wastes no opportunity to boast to friends and family that her daughter is a pageant queen. In private, however, she makes sure to remind Dee that she can’t fathom how a girl like her managed to win _one_ beauty contest, much less a whole spate of them.

The truth that nobody ever tells Dee is that she is in fact a very pretty girl, but Barbara is too vain and too threatened by her daughter’s youth and beauty to say so. She’s resentful of the way she catches her lovers eyeballing Dee when they think she isn’t looking. It’s an unwelcome reminder that her own youth is slipping away, and that in another few years her daughter will no longer be a child, but competition. This knowledge is such a thorn in her side that when Dee is diagnosed with scoliosis and prescribed a cumbersome aluminum back brace, effectively ending her pageant career, Barbara is quietly thrilled.

Dee is devastated. Her pageant success helped rebuild the self-confidence her mother worked overtime to undermine, and now that’s gone. Now she really is as ugly as Barbara has always said she is. While the rest of her classmates are pairing off with their first boyfriends and girlfriends, getting to first and sometimes even second base, attending school dances, and making out in the back of the movie theater, Dee is stuck on the sidelines. Her back brace is like a form of camouflage, rendering her socially invisible.

To add insult to injury, Dennis’ popularity has soared in the last year. He still isn’t anywhere near the top of the school food chain, though he’d like to be, but he’s started filling out, growing into his long arms and legs, becoming more muscular, and looking more like a young man instead of a spindly kid. If he wasn’t her asshole brother, Dee might almost think he was handsome. But he _is_ her asshole brother: This is the guy who draws obscene things on her face in Sharpie if she falls asleep in front of the TV, who snaps the elastic band of her bra as hard as he can while asking why she bothers to wear one in the first place (“It’s not like you have anything to put in it,” he taunts her), who enthusiastically affirms her parents’ cutting remarks about her appearance if he thinks it’ll win him some momentary favoritism. He’s a fucking douche, and not only does he never suffer any consequences for it, it’s actually brought him more friends.

Because Dennis navigates the social hierarchy of high school exactly the same way he does at home: by siding with the bullies. He figures out who has even less standing than he does, and then he gains some cred by adding his voice to the chorus of cruel jokes and mockery. He has no shame about hitting below the belt, and between his clever nastiness and his newfound good looks, he’s gradually working his way up the ladder, picking up plenty of fair-weather friends and attracting the attention of girls for the first time in his life simply by being mean.

Dee is his favorite target. He resents her for cramping his style by looking like a retard, so he spreads a rumor that she isn’t really his sister at all. He tells anybody who will listen that she was adopted, claiming at various times that their parents found her in a dumpster, that she was abandoned on their doorstep by some imaginary white trash neighbors who lived in an RV, or that she was a crack baby placed in their care by the state of Pennsylvania after her real parents died of an overdose. When the special ed bus pulls up in front of school Dennis yells, “Hey, Dee! Your ride is here!” while his stupid friends howl with laughter. On a day when she’s wearing white jeans, he puts a Little Debbie brownie on her seat at lunch to make her look like she shit herself. And Dee has no hard evidence, but she’s 99% sure that the person who graffitied “Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto” on her locker was Dennis.

And while Dennis’ treatment of Dee is vile, his inconsistency is way more hurtful. In front of their parents and classmates and his idiot butt-buddies Ronnie and Dirtgrub, it’s open season, and he’ll do and say whatever he thinks will score him some approval at Dee’s expense. But when they’re by themselves and he has nothing to prove, he’s playfully teasing rather than cruel. Sometimes he can even be kind. During the summer their parents take them on vacation to the Jersey Shore and Coney Island and Atlantic City, and while they’re busy getting loaded in some hotel lounge or other, Dennis and Dee split off by themselves and go exploring. They wander around under the boardwalk, go swimming in the ocean, and bribe bums to buy them alcohol and cigarettes. At night when they can’t sleep over the sound of Frank and Barbara having a drunken, screaming fight one room away, they sneak out of the hotel and go walking along the empty beach, and for a little while they’re bonded by the shared misfortune of being born into such a miserable, fucked up family. They’re almost friends then, and Dee can feel her heart opening to her brother, who for once feels like an ally instead of an enemy.

But Dennis’ loyalty is ever-changing and ultimately self-serving. Even when he acts fondly toward Dee, it’s only because there’s something in it for him. He knows if he plies her with enough warmth and enough fortified wine from the convenience store, she’ll confide some embarrassing insecurity he can divulge to their classmates later. He knows if he flatters her, she’ll spend her allowance on food and contraband for them both so he can keep his money. And he knows if he drapes an arm around her while they’re walking on the boardwalk, they’ll attract the attention of at least a few girls: the jealous, competitive type Dennis prefers. They’ll wonder what a guy as handsome as Dennis is doing slumming it with some disabled chick and feel compelled to draw his attention away from her, assuring Dennis at least one or two vacation flings.

Every time, as soon as Dee ceases to be useful to Dennis, he kicks her to curb, and every time the sense of betrayal is as fresh as if it were brand new, because every time Dee hopes that this time will be different.

It never is.

Most nights, Dee falls asleep fantasizing about Dennis dying gruesomely. She imagines a drunk driver flattening him with a car, or a rabid Rottweiler tearing his throat out, or gangbangers spraying him with bullets. At his funeral, when it’s Dee’s turn to speak, she stands at the podium and exposes him as the hateful monster he is, rattling off a litany of his crimes against her. All of the mourners are shocked at first, but their shock quickly turns to indignation on Dee’s behalf when they learn how deeply she’s suffered at his hands. Everyone gathers around Dee to console her, and her parents realize they’ve always loved her and tearfully apologize for the years of mistreatment, and nobody pays any attention as the gravediggers lower Dennis’ coffin into the ground. In fact, everybody is happy he’s dead.

This nightly ritual persists until Dee is sixteen and finally— _finally!_ —she meets her first boyfriend, Brad Fisher. She’s ecstatic, not so much because she’s dating Brad specifically (he’s almost handsome, but his looks are ruined by bad acne), but because she finally has proof that everyone was wrong about her. Brad thinks she’s pretty, and that cancels out everything her parents and Dennis and her mean-spirited classmates have to say about how ugly she is, what a loser she is, and how nobody will ever want her. Her victory is made all the sweeter by the knowledge that Dennis is currently single, and she knows it’s eating at him. When Brad comes over, Dee makes a point of kissing him, cooing at him, and sitting on his lap so Dennis can see, just for the satisfaction of watching him seethe. Now, instead of fantasizing about Dennis’ death, Dee falls asleep to thoughts of marrying Brad. Dennis is naturally excluded from their wedding.

But before long Dee gets tired of Brad. He dotes on her like nobody else in her life ever has, and it makes her uncomfortable. She’s used to having to fight for attention and affection, so when it’s given to her so freely it just feels wrong. Gradually she starts to think less of him, because deep down Dee still sees herself as the worthless, ugly loser everyone says she is, and if Brad likes her it must mean he’s an even bigger, more pathetic loser. She dumps him, citing his acne as the deal-breaker, because she doesn’t know how to articulate that she can’t handle being treated with kindness that doesn’t come with strings attached.

The only other male attention Dee receives between breaking up with Brad and graduating from high school comes from Matthew Mara, who wears heavy leg braces and attends the same physical therapy class as Dee. He openly fawns over her, and though he’s not bad-looking Dee finds his attention humiliating. Matthew is even more of a pariah than she is—if possible—and his interest in her makes Dee an even bigger target for ridicule. Being friendly to him would be a surefire way of destroying whatever scanty social status she has left, so Dee takes a page from Dennis’ handbook and makes Matthew her bitch instead. She uses his attraction to her to leverage him into doing her homework, carrying her bookbag, and giving her money, and rather than feeling guilt Dee is disgusted by how gullible and easy to manipulate Matthew is.

 _If he’s going to be this naïve, he deserves what he gets_ , she tells herself.

Senior year eventually rolls around, and on prom night Dee spends hours trying unsuccessfully to conceal that fucking back brace under her dress. While she’s fighting with it in the mirror, already on the verge of tears, Barbara breezes past, pauses to inspect Dee’s reflection, and says, “Good lord, you look like you’re wearing a sausage casing. Sometimes I think I brought someone else’s daughter home from the hospital by mistake, because you certainly didn’t get those genes from me.”

Dee spends the rest of the night hiding in her bedroom, prom dress discarded on the floor, crying into a pillow so her mother can’t hear. She eventually falls asleep, only to be woken up in the wee hours by a car engine, followed by the sound of commotion downstairs in the foyer. She looks out the window and, seeing Dennis’ car parked on the lawn, slips on her bathrobe and tiptoes downstairs to investigate. The front door is open, and there’s a light on in the dining room where Dennis is stationed at their parents’ liquor cabinet. Judging by his haphazard parking job and the way he’s swaying on his feet as he struggles to pour a shot, he’s already blasted and drove home drunk from the prom.

“What are you doing?” Dee hisses. Dennis turns around, startled, and Dee is taken aback. His eyes are red and watery as though he’s been crying.

Dee has never seen Dennis cry. Not once. On more than one occasion she’s fantasized about bringing him to tears, but now that she’s seeing it in real life she’s too confused to feel any satisfaction. It’s just so out of character.

“The hell happened to you?” she asks. Then, realizing that Dennis was alone, “What happened to Crystal?”

Dennis keeps one hand on the liquor cabinet for support as he throws back the shot. He winces at the burn, sets the glass down, and immediately pours himself another. “Tim Murphy,” he slurs. “Tim Murphy is what happened. And I don’t think I’ll be seeing Crystal anymore.”

Dennis looks and sounds completely defeated, and if he were any other person in the world Dee would probably feel compassion for him. Instead, she seizes the chance to give the knife a little twist: “Well, you never should have been seeing her in the first place. She was like thirteen.”

“She’s fifteen, and fuck you.”

“Whatever. You’re still banging an underage chick. It’s disgusting.”

“You’re disgusting.” Dennis throws back another shot. “How many dudes have you banged, Dee? Zero, right? You couldn’t even _get_ a prom date. Pathetic.”

“ _I’m_ pathetic? Which one of us is standing here crying like a little bitch because he didn’t get his dick wet tonight?”

Dee is expecting a scathing comeback, but instead Dennis is quiet and absolutely motionless, staring at her with an intensity that makes her pulse quicken. She can’t interpret the look on his face, and it frightens her because she can’t predict what he might do next. She suddenly feels like a small, hunted animal standing in the gaze of an apex predator—a wolf, perhaps, or a hawk. After a long, tense moment in which they stare each other down, neither willing to break eye contact first, Dennis speaks:

“The night isn’t over yet.”

And to Dee’s disbelief, her brother’s eyes rake over her body, looking her up and down. Dee is speechless, and although her brain is screaming at her to run, she feels frozen to the spot. Dennis has crossed an unfathomable line, and now the rules of engagement are all different. She has no idea what to do.

Before she can decide, he closes the space between them, slipping his hands around her waist and pulling her into him. His mouth is so close she can feel his breath on her lips and smell the whiskey he’s been guzzling. He brushes the tip of his nose against hers, and the jolt that runs through her helps Dee finally find her voice.

“What the fuck, Dennis?” she snaps, shoving him away. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Dennis stumbles slightly when she pushes him, and he grabs at the back of a chair to steady himself. For a moment he just stares into space, and then his glassy eyes seem to come into focus again, and he smirks. “Did you _actually think_ I wanted to _fuck_ _you_? Even if we weren’t related, I wouldn’t stick my dick in you if my life depended on it. Sick.” His tone is so condescending and his face so incredulous that even as drunk as he is and as disgusting as he’s being, he manages to make Dee feel two inches tall.

“You are such a piece of shit,” she spits out. “I’m going to bed.”

That night, Dennis and Dee have almost the same dream, but while Dennis wakes up in the midst of a full-throttle panic attack, clutching his throat and gasping for air, Dee wakes up flushed and moaning, one hand buried between her legs. When she’s fully conscious again, she feels horrified.

But she still replays the dream in her mind’s eye the next night before she falls asleep.

And the night after that.

And the night after that.

And the night after that.


	3. Dennis & Mac

“You know, ordinarily I wouldn’t associate with somebody like you, but you aren’t garden-variety white trash. There’s more to you than meets the eye.”

This isn’t exactly a compliment, but it’s the most flattering thing anybody has said to him in, well, maybe ever, and Ronnie can’t help but smile to himself as the Reynolds kid counts a pile of crisp bills out into his hand. Satisfied that it’s a fair deal, Ronnie palms him a little baggie of coke with a gesture that’s half handshake, half low-five.

That night, Ronnie watches as Reynolds snorts a rail off Valerie DiBiasio’s washboard-flat abs. She’s lying on a pool table in some classmate’s parents’ basement, the room is littered with red solo cups, and a circle of drunk partygoers howls their approval as Reynolds licks the girl’s navel to recover any missed traces of coke.

Valerie is awfully young, and Ronnie feels an uncomfortable mix of emotions seeing Reynolds practically molesting her in front of a roomful of people. _Come to think of it_ , Ronnie realizes as he looks around at the other guests, every _kid here is really young_. Every kid with the exception of him and Reynolds.

But Ronnie isn’t the deepest thinker, so he doesn’t consider why Reynolds is here or what that means about him. Ronnie knows why he himself was invited, and it’s not because any of these kids are interested in his friendship. He’s just St. Joe’s favorite drug mule.

* * *

“So, your brother mostly hangs out with a younger crowd, huh?” This is Ronnie’s best attempt at making small talk with Deandra, the other Reynolds twin. She’s pretty but surly, and she wears this horrible metal contraption that makes her look like something out of _Hellraiser_. Ronnie doesn’t really know her, but he knows she has money and that’s good enough for him.

Deandra snorts. “Yeah, that’s because he’s an asshole and nobody our age wants anything to do with him.”

“Really? I thought he was pretty popular.”

“He is, with other assholes and twelve-year-olds who don’t know any better. Can I please just get my weed and get out of here? My ride’s going to be here any minute.” And Deandra holds out an impatient hand.

* * *

The Reynolds twins make no effort to disguise their contempt for each other, but weirdly that doesn’t stop them from spending most of their free time together. Dennis has the more forceful personality of the two, and even though Deandra gives as good as she gets it’s clear that he runs the show.

Ronnie likes Deandra in the beginning. She never haggles with him over the price of weed, and unlike most of their classmates she doesn’t pretend not to know him when their paths cross at school dances or football games. Ronnie could almost think of her as a friend, but since he can’t help but take his cues from Dennis he knows that would be unacceptable.

Because it’s Dennis whose approval Ronnie really desires. Dennis is affluent and good-looking and has tons of friends—well, tons compared to Ronnie, who only has Charlie—and he treats his sister like she’s a hanger-on, unwanted except maybe as a punching bag. Naturally Ronnie follows suit, adopting the same disdain for Deandra that Dennis habitually shows her, rolling his eyes and snorting whenever she pipes up with an opinion, dismissing all her ideas, and talking over her in group discussions. Before long, Charlie has joined in with them, though he mostly just laughs at the cheap shots everyone else takes.

Deandra clearly resents being dogpiled on, but not enough to bail on their crew. Sometimes she can’t conceal the hurt on her face when one of them issues a particularly scathing put-down, and Ronnie almost feels bad for the way they treat her then, but he rationalizes the guilt away: After all, nothing is stopping her from leaving if she can’t take the heat. And besides, enforcing their hierarchy is a small price to pay if it means staying on Dennis’ good side.

It’s not that Ronnie is _afraid_ of Dennis. He just really, _really_ wants Dennis to like him. He craves his respect almost as badly as he craves his dad’s.

* * *

Dennis knows Ronnie admires him, and he’s tantalized by the power this gives him. But unlike Dee, who takes advantage of poor Matthew Mara’s crush on her for money, favors, and free stuff, Dennis doesn’t use this leverage for material gain. It’s just not his style. The bigger payoff comes from knowing he has unlimited power to get inside Ronnie’s head and screw with the controls. He’d never go out of his way to harm the poor doofus, of course, but he has no qualms about pressing some buttons if it’ll guarantee him a steady supply of attention.

And it does. Ronnie is a simple guy, and it doesn’t take Dennis long to figure out what makes him tick. For one thing, he has the most delusional self-image of anybody Dennis has ever met. He thinks of himself as some kind of badass martial arts expert, and all he ever wants to talk about is wrestling and leg presses. That points to extreme vanity and bodily insecurity. Probably some hang-ups about his masculinity, too. For another, his dad is a meth-head who’s been in and out of the slammer for most of Ronnie’s life. Dennis can smell the daddy issues from a mile off, like a shark detecting blood in the water.

Once he knows how to get under Ronnie’s skin, manipulating him is easy. Dennis alternates unpredictably between treating Ronnie with almost brotherly affection and freezing him out for no obvious reason. Sometimes he greets him with a smile and an enthusiastic slap on the back. Other times he makes only the briefest eye contact with him and speaks in monosyllables. This makes Ronnie practically climb the walls with anxiety, but he never asks Dennis outright whether anything is wrong. Instead he goes way overboard trying to make up for whatever it is he did to alienate him: giving him weed for free, cracking jokes, trying to impress him, asking whether he wants to hang out on such-and-such future date as if trying to gain assurance that Dennis will still want to be his friend by then.

It’s not that Dennis enjoys seeing Ronnie suffer. He just really, _really_ loves knowing somebody is working like crazy to win him over.

* * *

High school ends, college comes and goes, and after a while the gang aren’t young adults anymore—just adults. Mac goes by Mac now and he and Dennis share an apartment, and Dennis can’t pinpoint when it happened but at some point their relationship changed. He still plays with Mac’s head to further short-term goals (making Mac stop eating all his thin mints, for instance), but somewhere along the way Dennis lost the upper hand. Yes, Mac is still needy and dependent and hungry for Dennis’ approval, but in the years they’ve lived together Dennis has settled comfortably into thinking of them as a team. Whether he’d like to admit it or not Mac is his number one, and on the rare occasion when he’s not around Dennis can’t do much more than dwell on how quickly he’ll return.

Dennis does still have one ace up his sleeve, though: a nuclear option he could deploy at any time if he senses Mac slipping away from him for real. He doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to clearly see that his best friend is attracted to him, and while he has no real desire to fuck another dude, he’ll do what he must to hang onto Mac’s loyalty. Mostly this means that every so often Dennis will toss him some little morsel of false intimacy—sustained eye contact, unnecessary physical touch, some light intrusion into his personal space—and let Mac project whatever he wants onto it. It’s a highly effective strategy that costs Dennis almost nothing and keeps Mac trotting at his heels for years.

One night, however, shit gets real.

* * *

“Look, I’m not saying you’re not attractive. I’m saying that _if_ I were into dudes, _which I’m not_ , you wouldn’t be my type.”

It’s Tuesday night, and the DVD menu for _Jason Bourne_ is looping on the TV. Dennis and Mac are halfway through a case of beer, and though the alcohol has loosened their inhibitions it has done nothing to relax Dennis, who is almost quivering with anger.

“So you mean to tell me,” he says, incredulous, “that if you had to choose between that hack Matt Damon and me, you wouldn’t choose me?”

Mac snorts. “Matt Damon is an award-winning actor with a prizefighter’s sculpted physique. You …” he shakes his head, unable to find the words. “You might be man-on-the-street attractive, but you also have kind of a pretty boy thing going on, and I’m just not into that, you know?”

“I can’t believe you. I cannot believe you would say that to me. I feel like I’m talking to your mom all over again!” Dennis is outraged. “Mac, you’ve seen my tapes. You know how I work. You know what I have to offer. And for you to say you’d rather roll the dice on some middle-aged has-been actor over me, well, frankly I’m hurt. I’m hurt, and I’m not sure what this means for us going forward.”

Ordinarily a remark like this would send Mac into a panic, but the fortification of half a dozen beers gives him the courage to speak freely. “Yeah, and that’s the other thing. I’ve seen a lot of your tapes, man, and I dunno.”

“What don’t you know?”

“I mean, it’s all just a lot of plowing, you know?”

This catches Dennis off guard. He takes a moment to allow Mac’s words to sink in, then slowly turns to face him. “What did you just say?”

“I mean I’m not seeing a ton of _skill_ is all. It’s just you kinda jackhammering away, and I don’t wanna sound like a dick but it doesn’t seem like it’s super exciting for those girls. It’s sort of all about you the whole time.” Mac shrugs.

“It’s all about me?”

“Yeah, it just seems like they do a lot for you and you don’t really reciprocate so much, that’s all.”

Dennis says nothing.

“You always seem to be having a good time, but I’m just not sure how enjoyable it is for _them_ , you know?”

“It’s enjoyable for them!” Dennis yelps. “Of course it’s enjoyable for them! They’re getting to _enjoy_ the privilege of being banged by me. How do you not get that?”

“You know, forget I said anything. I mean, whatever you’re doing is clearly working for you, so let’s just drop it. You want another beer?” Mac reaches for the case.

“Oh, no-no-no- _no_ ,” Dennis replies, his voice a deadly murmur. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to call my sexual prowess into question and then tell me to just drop it. Don’t forget you’re talking to an _artist_ here, man.”

Mac can’t stop himself from giggling at that.

“You mind telling me what’s so goddamn funny?” Dennis demands.

Mac holds up his hands in surrender. “Whoa, you are getting way too defensive about this. It’s just my opinion, okay? You’re making this into a whole big thing and it doesn’t even matter. Let’s just watch something else and forget about it.”

“Sure, so then you can tell me how inferior I am to whatever ripped leading man heartthrob douche flashes his abs at you next? I don’t think so,” Dennis snaps back. “You made this personal, so we’re gonna get personal.”

* * *

Mac is speechless when Dennis climbs over to straddle his lap. Surely this is another one of his head-games. Dennis loves jerking him around, after all. Teasing him, like he thinks Mac is too stupid to know what he’s up to. Usually Mac rolls with it because attention with an ulterior motive is better than no attention at all (plus, he can always use his imagination to embellish it into spank bank material later), but this doesn’t feel like playing.

He gets as far as “What the fuck, man?” before Dennis kisses him, fully and open-mouthed. His lips and tongue are warm and slick and he tastes like beer and holy shit is that Dennis’ hand traveling up his shirt? Is that Dennis’ other hand on his junk? What the fuck is happening? _What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck?_ And all the blood in Mac’s body rushes to his groin so fast he feels like he might black out.

It doesn’t matter how many times Mac has imagined this exact scenario. No amount of fantasizing could prepare him for it actually happening. For a moment he’s frozen in disbelief, and then something clicks in his brain and his body takes over involuntarily. His arms wind around Dennis and pull him closer, and he kisses him back with a greedy mouth, too turned on to remember to keep up his not-into-dudes routine.

* * *

Shirts are peeled off. Zippers come down.

Dennis bites Mac’s neck and then gradually kisses his way southward, pausing just before he reaches his cock. He locks eyes with Mac, and the sight of him looking so flushed and nervous makes Dennis smile.

“Wait,” Mac interrupts. “Let me do it to you instead.”

“Not happening,” Dennis replies.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not all about me, remember?”

* * *

Less than thirty seconds pass before—

_“Oh, shit.”_

Mac’s left hand clenches around the arm of the sofa.

“Dennis, I’m gonna— _fuck!_ ”

In his many fantasies Mac frequently imagined Dennis sucking him off. He never imagined finishing in under a minute, however, and he _definitely_ never imagined Dennis—self-centered, _heterosexual_ Dennis—swallowing his cum like he’d done it a thousand times before.

_And yet here we are_ , he thinks.

Dennis wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. As Mac’s heart rate starts to return to normal and his breathing slows, he feels a flood of mixed emotions. He’s amazed by Dennis’ oral talents and wants to ask whether he’s done stuff with guys before, but he knows that would be stupid. He also wants to apologize for cumming so fast and explain that he usually lasts longer, but that would be stupid, too. He wants to fuck Dennis senseless, and he wants Dennis to fuck him. Above all, he wants to put his clothes back on and pretend this never happened, because now he's tipped his hand and he's pretty sure there's no coming back from it.

Instead he says, “Okay, I take back what I said.”

Dennis looks puzzled.

“I take back what I said about you not having skills,” Mac clarifies. “I was wrong.”

He starts to reach for his T-shirt but Dennis grabs his hand.

“That's it?"

Now it’s Mac’s turn to look confused. “What's the matter now? I said you made your point."

"You said I made my point about having skills. What about when you said I wasn't your type?"

"Jesus Christ, dude! Why do you even care? Let's just watch the next movie."

Dennis smiles as he plucks the shirt from Mac’s hand and tosses it away. “Oh, no. You’re not getting off the hook that easy. Take a few minutes and recharge if you need to, because that was just the first round. You’ve got a long night ahead of you.”

* * *

It is, of course, insane that Dennis would fuck Mac just to protect his own ego, but Mac doesn’t dwell on it.

Instead he makes a mental note to poke Dennis in the ego more often.


	4. Charlie & Dee

Charlie wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but he had a way of making it work to his advantage.

For one thing, it meant everyone assumed he wasn’t clever enough to be a convincing liar, and this allowed him to cover his ass on numerous occasions: the time he got busted skipping biology class to huff photo toner in the school darkroom, the time the manager at the neighborhood grocery store caught him trying to buy a bottle of Mad Dog with a fake ID, the time he and Mac snuck into a skin flick—only to run into Charlie’s mom in the audience.

The list went on.

Charlie lied frequently, easily, and with zero remorse to most of the adults in his life, but the person he lied to more than any other was Mac.

By sixteen, Mac had already had a slew of girlfriends, and he took great pride in recounting his sexual escapades to Charlie in extreme detail. In truth, Charlie found Mac’s stories nauseating, not only because he didn’t want to hear a graphic play-by-play of what made Mac blow his load, but because Mac’s deep denial about his attraction to dudes and his obvious over-compensation caused Charlie secondhand embarrassment. But he could never say any of that to his best friend. Instead he went through all the expected motions of giving congratulatory high-fives, rating Mac’s many conquests on a scale of ten, and cracking salacious jokes about what he’d like to do to each girl if only he got the chance.

It made him feel like a dumbass, but he didn’t have many other options.

The worst part of these many cringe-worthy conversations, however, was the moment when Mac inevitably turned the question back on Charlie: “How about you? You get any from Stacy yet?”

The way Charlie told it, Stacy was a taker, content to let him go down on her for hours but too prudish to ever reciprocate the favor, and her no-sex-before-marriage rule meant they were limited to hand stuff and mouth stuff only. Meanwhile, in reality, Stacy had been dying to get into Charlie’s pants almost from the moment they started dating, and _he_ was the one who’d been holding out on _her_.

But Charlie could never tell Mac that. If he told him that, he’d have to tell him about everything else. He’d have to tell him about how his heart started beating uncontrollably and his throat tightened whenever Stacy touched him below the waist. He’d have to explain why his hands became cold and tingly and he felt like he couldn’t breathe when she tried to take his clothes off. He’d have to explain why he could never stay hard with her, even though he wanted to.

And Charlie barely understood any of that himself. He couldn’t explain why the sensation of her hands on his body made his vision go blurry around the edges, or why the one time she tried to suck his cock he completely spaced out. He also couldn’t explain why he was secretly relieved when she got pissed and stopped what she was doing, chucked his clothes at him, and told him to go home, and he had a hunch he’d only make matters worse by trying.

On some level beneath his conscious awareness, Charlie knew all these weird sensations and the spike of fear he felt whenever Stacy tried to touch him had something to do with his uncle’s late-night visits to his room when he was little. The sense of dread was the same. The tingly coldness and the unsettling feeling of leaving his body was the same. But there was no way he could share that with Mac, or anybody. It was easier to just make up the entertaining story Charlie knew his best friend wanted to hear, so that’s what he did.

His next intimate relationship after Stacy was with Ruby Taft. She’d been even more eager than Stacy to get Charlie into bed, and for reasons even he couldn’t understand her enthusiasm disgusted him. He gently turned down her advances with the same excuse he claimed Stacy had given him: that he didn’t want to go all the way until he knew they were serious about each other. This absolved him of having to bang her for real and came with the bonus of making him look like a gentleman. Instead, he got her off with the translucent pink rabbit vibrator she kept hidden in her nightstand.

Two women. That was the extent of Charlie’s sex life almost until he reached middle age. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the female form. He had patronized more than enough titty bars and consumed enough porn to dispel that notion. It was just that reality was so different from his fantasies. Imagining himself fucking a woman—the Waitress, for instance—was a turn-on because he alone had total control of how the fantasy played out. But the addition of a real woman into the equation awakened something in Charlie that was terrifying and overwhelming and impossible for him to put into words.

That is, until the afternoon he found himself sprawled on Dee’s couch with his jeans around his ankles and her lips around his cock. Even as it was happening he couldn’t quite understand how they got there. A moment of prolonged, unusually intense eye contact between them gave way to the urge to kiss Dee, and though he was surprised at himself for even having the impulse he was even more surprised when she kissed him back. Kissing quickly led to groping, which in turn led to them both shedding their clothes, and Dee eventually dropping to her knees and taking him in her mouth.

Whatever initial trepidation he felt vanished as soon as Charlie felt her lips and tongue. He gasped at the sensation, then tilted his head back and moaned as she ran her tongue along the underside of his cock. Even though he was already sitting down he felt strangely weak-kneed, and he gripped the back of the sofa with one hand to steady himself and buried another in her hair.

_This is new_ , Charlie thought. Instead of the panic he was accustomed to feeling during sex, he was aware of only the gentle pressure of Dee’s hands massaging his balls and the warm wetness of her mouth on his shaft. He felt like he was fully inside his body instead of watching himself from elsewhere in the room. That was new, too. He had no idea what made Dee any different from Stacy or Ruby. All Charlie knew was that he didn’t feel like he was drowning in icy water when she touched him.

It was enjoyable enough that when she finally stood up, he protested, “Why did you stop? I was so close.”

“I know,” Dee said innocently. “But I don’t want you to cum yet. I want you to fuck me first.”

This made Charlie freeze up. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously,” she said, looking a bit offended.

The words popped out of his mouth before he could stop them: “I don’t want to do that, Dee.”

“How come?”

A dozen potential excuses leaped to mind. _Because I don’t want to cheat on the Waitress. Because I don’t wanna knock you up by mistake. Because Mac and Dennis could walk in at any moment. Because bestiality is illegal in the state of Pennsylvania and I could go to jail for banging a bird. Because, because, because . . ._

But instead he said, “I’ve actually never done that with anybody. I mean, not successfully, anyways.” In the long silence that followed, he could feel his heart thumping in his chest as he braced himself for Dee’s reaction. He expected a cutting remark or exaggerated disbelief, but instead her face softened. She looked confused instead of disdainful, and that threw Charlie off. It wasn’t like Dee to not be judgy and abrasive, and he couldn’t be sure what it meant.

“What about Stacy Corvelli?” she asked.

Charlie shrugged. “We did stuff, but not, you know, _everything_.”

“And Ruby?”

“I did stuff with her, too. I just didn’t let her do anything back, really.”

“Were you lying when you said you banged her a whole bunch of times?”

“Not really _lying_ , no. I did bang her. Just. With a dildo.”

Dee was quiet. She seemed to be taking all this in. “So you’re technically a virgin?” she asked.

“Eh, I’m more like half a virgin. I’ve done a lot of hand stuff. A lot of mouth stuff.”

“But no dick-in-pussy stuff,” Dee clarified.

“Nope.”

Another contemplative moment, then Dee asked, “Do you want to?”

Charlie shifted uncomfortably. “I _do_. I for sure do, but maybe not right now?” His voice was high and uncertain, and he glanced at Dee to gauge her reaction, but she was expressionless. For a moment they just looked at each other, and then she asked, “Want me to keep doing what I was doing?”

“I mean, yeah, if you want to.”

One corner of Dee’s mouth turned up in a half-smile then. “I do,” she said.

It didn’t take her much longer to finish the job. Charlie gasped when he came and his fists tightened around handfuls of her hair. He had a surprisingly sexy O-face, with his lips parted and his eyes closed in bliss. Most of the guys Dee had banged grimaced goofily when they shot their wads, and Dee had to fight back laughter to avoid killing the mood completely. This was a welcome improvement.

She retook her place on the sofa next to him and watched as he caught his breath. When he finally opened his eyes again, Dee was smiling at him. Charlie looked away, suddenly self-conscious.

“Well?” Dee asked.

“Well what?”

“Was it good?”

“Uh, yeah. Really good, actually.”

“You wanna keep going?”

Charlie was confused. “What else is there to do?”

“I mean, I was kinda hoping you’d return the favor.”

“Oh.”

“But if that’s gonna be weird for you . . .”

“No, it’s cool! Fair’s fair, I guess.” As he spoke he rearranged himself between Dee’s thighs. “I gotta be honest with you, though: It’s been a long time since the last time I did this. Like, a _really_ long time, so you might have to walk me through some stuff.”

As it happened, Dee didn’t have to walk him through much at all. Charlie had honed his skill going down on Stacy Corvelli back in high school and he required minimal instruction. In fact, to Dee’s astonishment, he got her off faster than most of the partners she’d had in the last few years. He didn’t have any of the annoying habits guys picked up from watching bad porn, either—flicking their tongues like lizards or shaking their heads back and forth like they were dogs with chew-toys. (What _was_ that, anyway?) He seemed to know intuitively how much pressure to apply, how fast to go, and when to speed up, and when he had her right on the edge he sucked her clit so insistently that Dee came with a yell they were both sure sure the neighbors could hear.

A moment later they were face to face, and she could taste herself on his lips as he kissed her. When he reached up to brush some sweaty strands of hair out of her face, she couldn’t stop herself from smiling, and she snorted with laughter when he wedged his body between hers and back of the couch and rested a head on her shoulder.

“I’m not gonna lie,” he said. “That was pretty fuckin’ hot.”

“Yeah, it was,” she agreed. “Who taught you to do that, anyway?”

Charlie shrugged. “You could say I’m self-taught.”

“Well, you’re gifted. I’ll give you that much.”

“Thanks.”

For a few minutes they lay side by side on the sofa, arms encircling each other, listening to each other breathe. After a while Dee said, “You know, we’ve gotta be back at the bar soon, so we should probably get dressed.”

Charlie sighed. “I know.”

“And I know I probably don’t need to say this, but nobody can know about this, Charlie.”

“I know.”

“Not Mac. _Definitely_ not Frank or Dennis.”

“I know!”

“Good. Sit up. We should get dressed.”

They gathered their clothes in silence, the prospect of returning to the bar forcing them to abandon this weird newfound intimacy and slip back into their usual roles. But before they did, Charlie had a question.

“Hey, Dee?”

“Yeah?”

“You think you’ll wanna do this again?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. Probably, yeah.”

“I’m not saying I want it to become a regular thing necessarily . . .”

“Yeah, me either.”

“But I had a lot of fun.”

“So did I, Charlie.”

Back at the bar, Mac would ask where they’d been all day, and Charlie would give him a line about tearing shit up at a def poetry slam. He and Dee would finish out their shift in awkward silence, both anxious that some noticeable change in their demeanor would give away their secret. After it got dark they’d tip out and head back to their respective apartments. On the way Charlie’s phone would buzz with an invitation, and after firing off a quick message to Frank about spending the night at his mom’s, he’d change direction and go back to Dee’s place instead. They would undress each other, and this time he’d let her climb on top of him, guide him inside her, and ride him until they were both spent and damp with sweat. He would fall asleep spooned against her, Dee’s wiry body curled around his. He wouldn’t wake up feeling like there was a hand squeezing his throat. He would be able to breathe.


End file.
